Conor Walton, one of Ireland's leading representational painters, strives to create paintings that go beyond mere technical competence. One of his stated goals is to endow his works with high, shared ideals so that his images will carry some of the cultural importance that religious art carried in earlier eras.

I recently interviewed Walton, who will be exhibiting eight recent still life paintings in San Francisco this month, and asked him about his background ideas and interests.

John Seed in Conversation with Conor Walton

Veiled, Oil on linen, 18 x 20 inches

Tell me a bit about your childhood: were you always an artist?

No! I was an astronaut, a commando and a zoologist first, as far as I remember. But I always drew pictures. I probably spent most of my childhood lying on the floor drawing and painting. I was quite shy and a bit of a loner. Drawing allowed me to escape into a world of my own making. But it was also my primary means of relating to the real world. I built my world out of pictures.

Saturnalia, Oil on Panel, 18 x 24 inches

Was Ireland a good place to receive artistic training? Tell me about your studies in Ireland and also in Italy.

The Ireland I grew up in was still a very traditional, conservative, Catholic country. It was largely untouched by the destruction and upheavals of the two World Wars that completely changed the cultural landscape in the rest of Europe. The teaching in the art colleges was very conservative up until the late sixties, when there was a sort of Cultural Revolution and the Modernists burst in and started shaking things up. As a result, when I went to NCAD in 1989, there were still some 'Ancien Regime' teachers left who were trying to teach painting as a craft according to "academic" principles.

But there were also Abstractionists, Neo-Expressionists, Pop Artists, Postmodernists and Conceptualists. All the major strands of twentieth-century art were represented by the teaching staff when I was there. They all seemed to secretly despise each other, and disagreed in their teaching about absolutely everything, and I found the whole experience extremely disorientating, but I think I learned a lot, from all of them in different ways. In terms of the cultural power-politics of the time, the 'academics' and 'traditionalists' were a waning force, but they were still there. They are gone now.

My time in Italy was in many ways the opposite experience. When I studied painting in Dublin, my interest in the craft and tradition of painting was seen as deeply reactionary. I was denounced for painting 'salon pictures', for producing a sort of wanna-be authoritarian or fascist art. But when I went to study with Charles Cecil in Florence, I was made to feel like an apostate of tradition - a Modernist! A Relativist! Charles avowedly hated the Twentieth Century, and his teaching seemed designed to produce a sort of simulacrum of the art of an earlier age, in which all evidence of Modernity, of NOW, was to be ruthlessly repressed.

I thought this was utterly pointless, and I ended up having as many arguments with Charles as I had with the Modernists back in Dublin. In fact they were even more bitter. I was almost banned from Charles' studio. The only thing that kept me in was that I knew my art history. Charles had a great way of quoting Leonardo, or Rubens, or Joshua Reynolds, like they were still alive and he'd just been talking with them over a drink in the bar next door. I'd studied all the sources he was quoting, and could answer back, and even correct him occasionally. Even while this annoyed him and challenged him, it thrilled him. No-one else answered Charles back. So he never kicked me out. And I did learn a lot from him, though not always what he wanted to teach me. I even respect the depth of his hatred for Modernity. I've absorbed it in my own way.

Ceci n'est pas une Blague, Oil on linen, 24 x 30 inches

You have a degree in Art History: when did you make the switch and make painting your main priority?

Painting was always my main priority. But NCAD ran a joint honours degree in art history, and those with brains to spare were encouraged to sign up and get two degrees for the price of one. At the time, hardly anyone in Ireland was making a living from art; you were expected to support yourself principally by teaching when you left college. Because my work aroused the hostility of the Modernists I was constantly in danger of crashing out of the painting department, and I couldn't see myself getting a teaching position there in the face of such opposition, so teaching art history seemed like a reasonable alternative. I was even allowed to write my thesis on abstract art and received a prize for it, despite my saying things in the thesis that were highly critical of the whole notion of abstract art. It seemed to me that art history was still a true 'academic' discipline with objective standards, whereas in the painting department any notion of academic discipline and objectivity had collapsed. But the art history department in my art college was unusually liberal.

When I went on to do a masters in art history in England intending, again, to focus on Modernist art from a highly critical perspective, I found my path blocked. I found that the specialists in Modernism I sought out to supervise my thesis wouldn't even entertain my ideas and refused to cooperate. Their hostility showed me that art history isn't such an objective discipline after all!

The Enemies of Progress, Oil on linen, 24 x 48 inches

Basically, those who make their academic careers out of studying an artist or movement become cheerleaders for their subject. They can become so wedded to the values and narrative on which the high reputation of their subject depends that they won't see them challenged. This is why the broad history of art in the twentieth century has become such a conventional, well-established orthodoxy. So I ended up doing my thesis on an episode in seventeenth-century cultural politics called "The Battle of the Ancients and the Moderns". I was still attacking the precepts of Modernism, but this time from behind! Which was fine. My supervisor said it was one of the best dissertations in the history of the department, and I was awarded my degree with Distinction.

In the end I found I didn't need to teach art history; I could earn a living from painting. But I owe a great deal to those studies. A grasp of past styles, iconography, symbolism has enriched my work in pretty obvious ways. But the drive behind my inquiry was my sense of cultural disorientation. Why did I feel so at odds with the ideas that were being taught at art college? Why did I find it so hard to admire or even respect so much contemporary art? These were puzzles that I could only solve by a period of intense study and deep reflection. And this was what I achieved while (supposedly) studying art history. So I managed to reorientate myself, and my world-view gained depth and maturity.

Still Life with Judgement, Oil on linen 24 x 18 inches

You have a feeling for allegory. Tell me about one of your allegorical paintings.

My Still life with Judgement is an allegory of aesthetic judgement. Modern notions of aesthetic judgement are derived from Immanuel Kant, whose Critique of Judgement is one of the books in the painting. The basic idea is that Art affords us an extremely pure pleasure, unmixed by any self-interest, because Art is useless. Now this idea is total crap. Art is extremely useful. Those who make a big deal about it demonstrate their refinement, their class and (if they have it) their wealth for all to see. It has huge social and cultural utility. But all these vested interests hide behind the common lie that, in matters of Art, good judgement is disinterested. And in this painting I've tried to make an image that articulates some of my feelings about the subject.

The old Krups weighing scales performs two functions in the painting. With a cast of a human face atop, it becomes a metaphor for the coldly calculating brain behind the face -- backed up by books of art theory, history and criticism -- weighing, measuring, judging 'disinterestedly'. The face is turned resolutely away from the earth and the fruity pleasures at the base, contemplating 'higher' things. But the face on the scales also invokes the symbolism of the Last Judgement and Weighing of Souls. So maybe the 'disinterested' aesthetic judge is also up for judgement. These echoes of Christian iconography also help to amplify the religious, apocalyptic feel of the picture, making it akin to a sacrificial alter or shrine. The fruit at the base are a sort of natural, earthy counterpoint to the strange, artificial construction above. Painted with the brightest, purest colours and most alluring textures I can muster, I want the whole picture to appeal to your sense of touch, to your appetites, to your fascination with illusions, to your covetousness, to every pleasure which is physical, earthy and NOT disinterested.

Overall, I hope the painting maintains a sort of equilibrium between the elements. Although I intend my paintings to honour Nature and appeal frankly to the senses, to pleasure and passion, in my demand for rigorous formal order and intellectual content, I know I'm also inside this painting's coolly calculating intellect.

Fat Tails, Oil on linen, 15 x 36 inches

What is it about the still life genre that interests you?

To begin with I was not really interested in the genre: my principal interest has always been painting people and 'living nature' rather than 'nature mort', but live models are expensive and I paint slowly, and still life seemed like a good way of producing small saleable works that I could paint from life and develop my eye and technique at the same time. But the deadness of objects, their lack of energy or any psychological presence has always been an obstacle to me, something to overcome. I'm not at all happy with still life as an exercise in pure objectivity or pure form. So I end up trying to treat the painting as a miniature drama, a microcosm. I use objects that have meaning for me and try to get the whole painting to make a statement, to express an attitude. And because still life is an art of objects -- of deadness -- attitudes like objectivity, materialism, fatalism, nihilism, are easily accessible through the genre. It's a battleground for me: a way of waging small-scale war against modernity.

Illusionism still has great artistic potential because reality is still something we find difficult and threatening. I've heard it said that people can avoid facing reality, but they can't avoid the consequences of not facing reality. I think my work is very much bound up with these issues; with naturalism at one remove, with fantasy and disillusionment. In our culture, to an historically unprecedented extent, affluence and industrial might have become weapons in a general war against reality, against nature. But Nature's still going to win.

I suppose fundamentally I think of myself as at odds with the still life genre and most of its 'default settings'. But in some ways it's a good position to be in: everything I do in still life is done tactically, strategically, self-consciously; my dissatisfaction with and to some extent contempt for the genre is what allows me to push it around, to use it purely as a means to my ends. Every once-in-a-while I get very frustrated with painting objects and feel like I'm close to exhausting its possibilities for me, but it usually doesn't last long. Right now I'm flying along. It's a great time to be a cultural pessimist!

Here be Monsters, Oil on Linen, 15 x 24 inches

What will be showing in San Francisco?

I'll have about eight paintings in a still-life exhibition at CK Contemporary along with eight really brilliant painters from right around the world: Jay Mercado, David de Biasio, Dianne Gall, Hollis Dunlap, K Henderson, Ottorino de Lucchi, James Neil Hollingsworth and José Basso.
You can see an online catalogue of the exhibition here.

Earth-Moon Distance, Oil on linen, 18 x 30 inches

What are your interests outside of art?

Any chance I get -- which is not too often these days -- I try to get some time in the wilderness, in something approximating Nature. I'm lucky to be living beside the sea, with long cliff walks nearby, and near the Wicklow mountains, where you can go off-track and not meet another soul for a day if you want to.

I like to read. I'm interested in philosophy and history and science. More recently, in order to fathom how our crazy world really works, I've taken to reading books on economics and scanning the financial papers.

But these days, raising my three young children is my main interest when I'm not painting. My eldest beats me at chess now, so things are getting very interesting indeed!
OBJECTS OF BEAUTYContemporary Still Life Painting
Opening Reception: September 6, 6-9 PMCK Contemporary
357 Geary Street
San Francisco, CA

Artist JeanPaul Mallozzi, a native of New York City now working in Miami, is a kind of psychic Surrealist who creates dreamlike personal narratives that attempt to glimpse his subject's psyches. Entrancing, memorable and unnerving, Mallozzi's works are uncannily emotional.

I recently spoke to JeanPaul Mallozzi and asked him about his history, his ideas and his recent work.

John Seed in Conversation with JeanPaul Mallozzi:

JeanPaul Mallozzi: Photo by Juan Pablo Castro

Tell me a bit about your early life and how it shaped you.

My parents immigrated to the U.S. from Italy and Cuba and settled in Queens, NY where I was born and raised. Being the youngest of four siblings in an immigrant household, telling my parents I wanted to be an artist didn't really inspire much confidence or praise: just eye rolls and heavy sighs. Thankfully my older sisters and brother had my back, but I still had to work hard to prove I was actually a good artist. I struggled like most artists to develop real confidence in my skills and techniques and I think it was harder because it was instilled by my parents in me to be humble. It wasn't an easy mental balancing act.

It's on Shuffle, 20 x 16 inches, Oil on board

Talk a bit about your experiences in art school, and about what happened when your portfolio was stolen.

RISD was intimidating as HELL. I received a scholarship to attend -- that blew my mind -- but once I was there I realized that I was placed in a small pressure cooker loaded with talented people. The do I really belong here? thoughts made regular appearances. It was a hard time to keep the increasing self doubt in check while tasked with an intense regiment to make "quality" work for studio classes every week. However, all that time spent honed and strengthened my skills and brought out speed which is a great asset to have in this field.

As far as my portfolio being stolen, it was literally the last day of my Junior year in college and I was moving my stuff out of the apartment. I left the portfolio downstairs for a few minutes. When I came back from bringing down another box it was gone and I was beside myself with disbelief. Three years of work gone and most of it not photographed at that point.

Some time later I found out from a girl who contacted me after she saw one of my pieces -- one of the few I had a photo of -- on MySpace I had as a profile picture. She told me she bought one of those missing pieces and that it was hanging in her living room. She said it was sold by the "artist" who was trying to get across the country. She was kind enough to send it back to me. But that theft basically left me unable to get commissions/jobs for a while because I did not have enough time to develop that much new material in a year.

So I spent the next few years saving money doing other jobs like waiting tables, gallery assistant etc. Eventually I got into a studio residency and quit my "day" job. I spent all my time making a new body of work with no prospects just hoping something would happen. Fortunately, something did. I was picked up by a gallery in London and it snowballed from there.

Keening, 42 x 42 inches, Oil on linen

Have you always been a representational artist? Were you able to find mentors and friends who supported what you were doing?

Representational work struck me as a kid and I have a huge love for it. I was in awe of artists who were able to create a convincing alternate reality of their own and be baffled as to how they did it.
I've had some great mentors like Nick Jainschigg and Shanth Enjeti both of whom have had a profound influence on me and my work. Nick being a master at painting realism taught me a lot of nuts and bolts. Shanth was teaching Character Design at the time and I'll never forget him telling me that while I can paint very well..."if the concept is sh*t and it's painted beautifully, it's a beautifully painted piece of sh*t".

After college, I sought out Steven Assael whom I was lucky enough to take an independent studio class with as I held down a full-time job in Manhattan. I distinctly remember being the youngest student in his class at the time. So after work I'd go there, paint, and do the hour and half commute back home to Bayside, Queens.
Thankfully, I had some good friends to reassure me that I wasn't wasting my time.

Your art often refers to emotional states: were you always tuned into your own emotional states and the emotions of others around you?

As I got older I found myself "reading" other people's emotions a lot especially during long train or bus commutes back home from the city. I would just sketch them in my book capturing their energies, their moods, their stories. If it wasn't on their face, then I'd key in on their body language. The way they sat or slouched, held their bags, talked on phones. Also, I come from an upbringing where pretty much everyone wears their emotions on their sleeves. When there's laughing, it's loud. When there's a fight, it's very loud! In both cases, neighbors have ended up coming over to join the party or calling security to keep the noise down.

The eyes and figures of your heads often feature stylizations and bits of abstraction. When did that start, and what are you trying to suggest with these images?

I had a literal moodswing in my apartment over five years ago and I wanted to reinterpret that visually, and thats where my personal work started took over other projects at the time. The stylizations and abstractions mimic facial features like eyes and smiles/frowns. Over the years, the abstractions have become more controlled and recognizable. I tend to do the highly abstracted faces with contoured lines when the figure is in a heightened emotional state, usually when they're in some sort of movement. Emotions are amorphous and different spectral colors give off different frequencies that people respond to. Its there like a keyhole to show the viewer the energy present inside the person at that moment.

Lie With Me, 24 x 18 inches, Oil on board

Tell me the story behind "Lie with Me."

The title has a double meaning. The first taking the title literally. The other side, I made this painting during a time when I was head deep in a rough relationship. I found myself "going through the motions" knowing things were at an end, just waiting for one of us to make the move to end it officially. I wanted the guy's gestural face to mimic a sad smile looking down on her, but the woman looking at you (the viewer) as the object of affection. You become the greener pasture. It's about having the courage to break away from something you know isn't healthy for you any longer.

What will you be showing at Copro Gallery?
Nathan Spoor was incredibly kind enough to invite me to show at this year's group exhibit called Suggestivism: Chronology. It's a recurring group show Nathan spearheads and this is the 5th installment; the last one being held in Rome, Italy. All the exhibiting artists portray figurative work that all suggest there is something more there than it seems to be on the surface. Here is how Nathan explains the show's theme:

At it's basic level, Suggestivism is based on the artist's specific and unique vision, a psychological or even mystical manifestation brought into reality by the artist's personal aesthetic. It's often representational, almost always in fact, but it is never restricted to being figurative or needing to include the figure.

I find myself in the company of incredible artists that I respect so much including Nicola Verlato, Aron Wiesenfeld and Marco Mazzoni.

The exhibit is currently running until September 6th.
Due Venti (Two Winds) I created for this show as a farewell to a theme I was exploring. The girl carried off by two winds which are represented by two birds in flight while listening to her headphones plugged into a flower suggesting she's literally seeing the world from a different place--not plugged into technology but into the natural world. It's the last in the series so I thought it appropriate to send her off in style.

Due Venti, 24 x 18 inches, Oil on board

What direction is your work taking right now?

I've made a conscious shift and am bringing the optimism that some of my works on paper give off to the canvas. We've all reached out for help at some point in life. I'm portraying people who are asking for help, comfort, release and having that help manifest as a "familiar" or spirit guide. I'm also building on the colors fields around the face and eyes, allowing them to show through in certain areas: I'm letting paint be paint.

Purify (study), 10 x 8 inches, oil on board

Also, these works will be much bigger in scale ranging between 3 feet to 8 feet. I bought a bunch of canvas rolls for that reason. Thanks Pearl Paint! The small study Purify portrays a girl that has removed the negativity in herself and that manifested into a small iridescent-dark kitten dripping in her hands. The energy around her face and eyes suggest she's found a rose-colored view on the world as she looks straight at you.

Sketchbook Page

How do you keep yourself humble as a person and as an artist?

Honestly, I'm constantly reminding myself how precious and awesome being able to do this for a living is. I've had it taken away from me once already and I'm elated and relieved that I was able to get it back. I am beyond grateful for any gallery exhibit I participate in, any sale made, and any person and collector in life or via email/social media who tells me how they appreciate the work and how it's affected them. I never take any of it for granted.

I'm happy to be participating in a few more shows this year out in the California: Smoke & Mirrors at Marcas Gallery, Tres Años at As Issued Gallery and I also am in a show at Flower Pepper Gallery. I also currently have a large piece on display at Gitana Rosa Gallery in Chelsea, NY.
I will be locking myself away painting in time for Art Basel Miami. My studio is currently in the Art Center South Florida, in Miami Beach.

Artist Tracey Adams, who currently has a solo show on view at the Bryant Street Gallery in Palo Alto, draws her ideas and inspirations from a wide variety of fields including music, mathematics and science. In her varied works, all of these disciplines come together in visual form, in a process that Adams characterizes as involving a "synthesis of intention and chance."

I recently interviewed Tracey Adams and asked her about her background, her interests, and her priorities.

Tracey Adams in Conversation with John Seed

Tracey Adams

Tell me about your childhood and formative experiences: how old were you when you first showed an interest in art?

I'm very fortunate that my parents loved art and collected Japanese prints. My mother had a small ceramics studio in our house where I could play and I always had crayons and paper: she made sure I was enrolled in art and music classes and that I attended art camp during the summer. On Saturday mornings, we'd go to matinees, exhibitions and concerts geared specifically to children at UCLA.
I was 3 when I started drawing and playing the piano. Always supportive of my interest in art, my mother entered a tempera painting I made when I was 5, Hot Dogs and Arrows, in a local art competition; it won third prize!

As a graduate student you focused on music and also did some conducting in Boston. Tell me about this era and how it shaped you.

As an undergraduate, I studied music theory and composition, which was interesting, but not terribly exciting. My group of peers at UCLA would get together and perform early music weekly. Each of us had the opportunity to conduct and that is what really excited me: bringing music to life through interpretation and performance.

In Boston as a graduate student in conducting, I worked at Northeastern University as assistant conductor for two years and at Harvard-Radcliffe University as conductor of the Graduate Chorale for one. Conducting requires physical movement and communication, like dancing, which was fun and incredibly fulfilling. I got to hang out with John Cage and Philip Glass, and both of those contacts inform my work to this day.

I moved to L.A. after graduate school and created my own performing group with two friends who are currently very involved in the classical music scene. While I no longer perform, music is part of who I am. It's present in the way I develop line and composition in my work; for each element in music, there is its corollary in art.

I was invited to be the 2014 Visual Artist for the Music at Menlo Chamber Music Festival and Institute this summer. When I asked the directors why they chose my work they mentioned my use of color and rhythm which reflects the transition from 19th to 20th century Central European composers that are being featured this year.

While still pursuing music you also took courses in painting and drawing. How and when did you come to the realization that you needed to make art your primary pursuit?

In 1991, after working for 11 years as a freelance musician, I longed for the solitude a studio practice could provide. There were always interpersonal issues working with musicians and staff. Additionally, I was limited in what I could achieve in the conducting field as a woman, even though I had a degree from a renowned music conservatory. I grew frustrated and impatient when preforming became less about the music and more about other things. So, I picked up my drawing pencils and would sit for many hours drawing peacefully and happily. The rest is history.

You have said that you work at the "intersection of art, math and music." Tell me about some of the ways that these three fields overlap.

Music theory is an analysis of relationships: intervals between tones -- melodically and harmonically -- rhythm and meter, scales and keys. The frequency of sound waves that produce pitch can be measured mathematically. This is a very simple response to a complex answer.

I often use mathematical formulae in my art. For example, in my current series, (r)evolution, I pre-determine the colors to be used, how many times they appear and how they appear in the composition. It is important how and where a viewer enters my painting and how his/her eye travels around the composition. (r)evolution is about pattern within a grid structure. Other series include a grid structure, but more organic gestures within that framework. I like to say that my work exists on the "continuum between gesture and geometry": I used that phrase as the title of my 2011 exhibition at the Fresno Art Museum.

Tell me about your interest in printmaking and describe some of your work in that medium.

After seeing the Met's exhibition, the Painterly Print in the 80's I knew I had to learn how to make monotypes. I signed up for a class at the Provincetown Fine Arts Center and studied with one of the best, Michael Mazur. I received so much from him including his enormous generosity as a teacher.
Monotypes are transfer paintings from plate to paper, created in the moment, and can be used as studies for future paintings or they can exist on their own as prints. I have made hundreds of monotypes and monoprints (using a matrix). In 2007, I learned a new, but similar process of making an encaustic (pigmented wax) monotype on a hot aluminum table. The most exciting works I've done have been my encaustic prints on Japanese scrolls. Some of them are 24' long and have been exhibited as groupings and walk-through installations in museum exhibitions.

Folded (June 15, 2014) - encaustic on Masa, 12"x12", 2014

One of your recent projects started with a simple exercise in folding paper, but has grown much larger. Tell me a bit about the development of this work.

I love working with paper. My new series, Folded, deals with a way of representing time spent in the studio day-to-day through the use of folds. Each day has a certain number of folds I make that correspond to the day in the month. For example, the piece made on June 14 has 14 folds. The folds are different widths, corresponding to a calculation I made for each piece. The papers used are fragments of encaustic monotypes created on different Japanese papers; the monotypes were made close to the same time as the folded piece was made.

This project developed as my other collage projects have - out of a need to break away from whatever painting or show I'm working on in order to work in a less intense but more playful way. Initially, I set certain parameters for myself: the maximum time spent on each folded piece would be less than an hour and no piece would be larger than 12"x12". Many of the pieces are smaller.

Recently, I've begun to make my work larger as this has been such a fun break from painting. Collage has always been my default and comfort for those frustrating and trying moments in the studio and in life. It is the perfect balance of intention and chance.

After hearing about the work of chemist Roger Linington on NPR - a chemist who is investigating the healing properties of marine bacteria - you visited him and became excited about the potential of his work. Where do you think this connection is going to lead?

My next step is to return to Roger's lab to get a look at specimen slides under the microscope. Once I have actual visuals, I'd like to begin work on a large installation that will include my scrolls and three-dimensional forms fabricated from my scroll paintings. The imagery would be the healing bacterium, each with its own unique shape, internal structure and color. I can visualize someday walking through this installation that might look like a giant petri dish -- bacterium suspended from the ceiling to the floor in the form of sculptures and scrolls. Once completed, I'd like to write a proposal and submit it to appropriate non-profit, science and art museums for possible exhibition.

This one is tough, John. My sense of humor is communicated through conversations with friends and students more than through my art.

That said, in my current series, (r)evolution, I'm playful in my choice of color and rhythm e.g. placement and color of the circles. The Folded series is also playful. I'm also a pretty good mimic and can be very silly at times, dissolving into giggles easily. I'm able to laugh at myself, at mistakes I make, especially when teaching. I have the ability to see the lighter side of life's often illogical situations by not getting bogged down in the negative or trite: it's something I've focused on most of my adult years.

My perspective changed dramatically when, at 16, I read Ram Dass', Be Here Now. It was a life-altering book for me. Currently, I'm reading Kay Larson's, Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism and the Inner Life of Artists. It's a wise book that helps me maintain a live-in-the-present-moment perspective.

(r)evolution 4, Encaustic, collage and oil, 36 x 36 inches, 2014

Is there anything else about your current work or artistic practice that you would like to mention?

Everything in my life is interconnected: my painting and current projects in the works, my yoga practice, my teaching, and my relationships.

At this point in your life and career what matters most to you?

Several things: what's most important to me is having the freedom to create the kind of art that is most fulfilling and not necessarily what a gallery/dealer wants. That is why I'm excited about my two latest projects. Also, it's important to pay it forward and give back where I'm able. At the other end of the spectrum, I take great joy and pleasure teaching yoga and Pilates. I have many responsibilities, but this one is special as it's not about me, but helping others with certain physical and emotional conditions regain their independence and live a more quality-filled life.

A blog and video that recently appeared on the HuffingtonPost Arts page -- Why Leonardo Da Vinci Was A Loser (And What That Means For You) -- has apparently re-ignited a longstanding feud between Leonardo da Vinci and his frenemy Michelangelo. Here are a few highlights from a Twitter war that erupted after the blog was posted, along with a few comments from Savonarola...